[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 10

[Timothy Conway Murray]

Hi, Richard,

No I don't mean to suggest that creative 'convergence' is not possible with screen-based, linear films.  I too can think of many such examples, from early examples such as Chris Marker's Level 5 and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books to much more recent and more complicated examples, such as Bong's Snowpiercer. My concern is that the Busan film festival seemed hesitant to embrace and celebrate alternative approaches. I can see your concern about the "spectacular."  I'd be hesitant to argue against the value of the spectacular but I guess I could be baited into arguing for the value of lending adding attention to new media based approaches.  While I realize that this is my personal preference, it wouldn't be difficult to call upon the history of cinema to develop a suspicious attitude toward the merely spectacular.

Renate and I were meeting today with Alex Taek-Gwang Lee who will be our guest this week who made the very interesting suggestion that the convention of contemporary Korean film is not to divorce spectacle from the political.  So it will be interesting to hear more about this from Alex this week.

Best,

Tim  


Director, Society for the Humanities
Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
A. D. White House
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York. 14853
________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Richard Wright [futurenatural at blueyonder.co.uk]
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2013 7:38 PM
To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 10

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Dear Tim,

thanks for your response. I hope you won't mind if I say that I am still not quite sure I have got my head around this.

You referred to festival films that have brought the "spectacle of digital technologies" to the screen ("spectacle" being one of those words often used in these scholarly debates to connote something disapproved of). And contrast these to "alternative artistic approaches" that are specifically dependent on completely different basic moving image technologies (the interactive, networked, mobile and so on). So do you mean that the "converging", one directionally or otherwise, of digital technologies in screen based film (is that the right term? Or "linear film"? Or "theatrical film"?) does not lead to new artistic approaches but to the "spectacular"? And/or do you mean that even if they do lead to new artistic approaches they will not be as successful as those using new media based film technologies (is that the right term?) because these specific technologies are necessary to permit artistic approaches that can "critique commercial and conventional notions of the screen and vi
 ewing subjects"?

I am not sure, but I think I might just be able to think of a few examples of single screen-based, linear, sit-on-your-arse-and-watch films, that qualify as incorporating new media forms into "alternative artistic approaches" and so able to "critique commercial and conventional notions of the screen and viewing subjects" or something equally worthy.

I do hope this is not all getting too convoluted,

Richard


> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 23:55:27 +0000
> From: Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 9
> Message-ID:
>       <338FF2A47233C34B9DC167AAA91534C20F4E2966 at CH1PRD0411MB442.namprd04.prod.outlook.com>
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
>
> Dear Richard,
>
> Thanks for your question and I'm happy to clarify my suggestion.  Yes, you're absolutely correct in suggesting that the presence and flavor of animation in Snowpiercer and Anatomy of a Paper Clip indicates the extent to which cinema has integrated digital technologies, I was trying to share my observation that this interest, at least as championed by the Busan International Film Festival, seemed to be one-directional.   While the festival championed these films that brought the spectacle of digital technologies to the big screen, it chose not to champion alternative artistic approaches to capitalizing artistically from multiple digital platforms, such as interactive technologies, multiple screen formats and mobile technologies,, networked cinemas or what Jeffrey Shaw has termed, iCinema, net.art, etc.  While this is understandable for a traditional film festival, the independent experimentation with new media that often critiques commercialism and conventional notions of th
 e "screen" and viewing subject(s) seemed not receive any attention at this year's Busan Festival, which paradoxically staged a new conference format around the theme of medial "convergence." Hope this clarifies things.  Best,
>
> Tim
>
>
> Director, Society for the Humanities
> Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
> A. D. White House
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York. 14853
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Richard Wright [futurenatural at blueyonder.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, October 11, 2013 5:46 AM
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 9
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Yello all,
>
> not quite sure I follow the point you're (both) making about the "absence of new media and technologies influences" in the movies.
>
> Aren't the two movies Tim Murray describes examples of just that?
> The first "Snowpiercer" is described as using copious amounts of computer animation technologies. And the second "Anatomy of a Paper Clip" is described as using a (digital?) stop motion style of performance which would indicate the strong influence of technologies on artistic style.
>
> So are they absent or not absent? Are you saying that these movies are rare exceptions? (which would not have struck me as the case).
>
> Richard Wright
>
>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 14:44:22 +0000
>> From: Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: [-empyre-] Youngmin and things at BIFF
>> Message-ID:
>>      <338FF2A47233C34B9DC167AAA91534C20F4E1432 at CH1PRD0411MB442.namprd04.prod.outlook.com>
>>
>> ?
>
>> Yet, Renate and I have enjoyed two films that seem to thrive on such convergences.  The Korean director Bong Joon-ho screened his extraordinary film, Snowpiercer, which tells an eerie and violent tale of social upheaval in the new postglobal warming ice age, as the survivors circle the globe in a hierarchically ordered train, with a marvelous performance by Tilda Swinton.  The marvel is how the film successfully cut between dazzling animated sequences of the train crashing through icebergs and the traditional analogue representation of the diegesis. We enjoyed the flipside of this tonight while watching Japanese director Akira Ikeda's Anatomy of a Paper Clip (a miminalist sado-masochistic portrayal of class abjection in which directing evoked a combination of realist miminalism and pared down animation).  While the film contained no animation until the credits, the actors every movements seemed to embody the craft of top-motion animation as nuanced in the digital scene.
>>
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:21:43 -0400
>> From: Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Youngmin and things at BIFF
>> Message-ID:
>>      <CAA2fNo+4ojMKyEq+9rFGNeGgyvbW+ffdwGoZyjqP+Gpd_BbrTA at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>>
>> Thanks Tim for encapsulating Youngmin's session.
>>
>> One of the themes of the Busan Film Festival Forum has been the convergence
>> of contemporary cross-disciplinary interests with time-based media and
>> film. I concur with Tim that the striking absence of new media and
>> technologies influences is definitely noteworthy.
>
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre